The oppression of women in Afghanistan and the Western-appointed regime (AWTWNS 28 March 2016)

This AWTWNS news packet for the week of 28 March 2016 contains one article. It may be reproduced or used in any way, in whole or in part, as long as it is credited.

Web site: aworldtowinns.co.ukTo subscribe or for back issues: http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/AWorldToWinNewsService/

Write to us – send us information, comments, criticisms, suggestions and articles: aworldtowinns@yahoo.co.uk

The oppression of women in Afghanistan and the Western-appointed regime

28 March 2016. A World to Win News Service. It has been a year since the brutal murder of Farkhunda by a mob of men. She was accused of burning the Quran. Government officials initially justified the murder, but as the people’s anger rose in Afghanistan and the world, they backed down – slightly. Many of the perpetrators are still free. The government seems reluctant to sentence the few still in prison and many of the initial sentences were overturned by the state court, which then imposed lighter sentences. Farkhunda’s mother, BiBi Hajar, expressed her frustration in a video message sent to the media on 8March this year. She said, “This 8 March in Afghanistan is being celebrated at a time when justice for women in Afghanistan has been buried with Farkhunda forever. God give me patience because justice has not been done.” (BBC, 8 March 2016)

She was making a strong point, because the murder of Farkhunda was not the end of injustice for the women in Afghanistan and it has been followed by other shocking events.

In November 2015, Rokhshana, a 19 year-old woman in a village in the central province of Ghor accused of adultery, was stoned to death by a group of men, apparently after a local trial. According to the governor of Ghor, Seema Joyenda, “Rokhshana first ran away several years ago to Iran after her family tried to marry her off to an old man. After they brought her back, they forcibly married her off to another old man. When she ran away this time, she did so as a married woman, and was punished with stoning.” (Guardian, 3 November 2015)

In December, the husband of Riza Gol, a woman from Faryab province, cut off her nose and part of her upper lip with a knife. A similar incident happened to Setara, another Afghan woman, a year earlier. An 18 year-old from Samangan was killed by her father using a hatchet. According to the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, so-called “honour killings” rose in the six months from March to September 2015. Out of the 190 women known to have been murdered in Afghanistan during this period, 101 were registered as honour killings. These are only samples of many more and perhaps thousands of similar cases of violence against women on a daily basis.

Even though only a small fraction of cases of domestic violence against women gets registered, and many forms of violence (for example, psychological and verbal violence) are not considered as such, still more than 5,000 cases have been registered, according to a report by the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission. The same report indicates a five percent increase with respect to the previous year, after a 20 percent rise a year earlier. The same report indicates that the dimensions of violence are more horrific and the perpetrators are younger.

Some perpetrators have been arrested but many thousands are free, and they feel safe to continue committing crimes against women, even though those women could be their wife, daughter, sister or mother. They see the law, religion, tradition and the authorities on their side. According to Human Rights Watch, 90 percent of Afghan women have been victims of violence. Only a fraction of cases in which women are killed are treated as murder, and in only less than 30 percent of the cases are the killers arrested. Most can escape even a trial.

Since the Islamic regime was first set up by the US and other Western imperialists in 2001, with a new US-brokered government installed in 2015, Western political leaders have been giving the impression of a gradual improvement in the status of women in Afghanistan. The Western mainstream media continuously report the number of women members of Parliament, the number of women in the government cabinet or the number of women governors. The reports mainly compare women’s situation now with that under the Taliban. It is true that during the religious fundamentalist rule of the Taliban and, before that, the rule of the mujahidin warlords in the 1990s, the situation for women in Afghanistan was especially harsh. Women’s rights were tremendously restricted, and their oppression took its most open form.

The Mujahideen (who had fought the occupation of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union, the US’s main imperialist rival) came to power with strong military, financial and political support from the US and other Western imperialists. As each warlord established relations with a different regional power, they were eventually dumped by the imperialists. Then the Taliban took over the country with military and political support by US allies such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Girls were banned from going to school, and many more restrictions were imposed on women, especially outside the home. In fact the US and the West bear a big responsibility for what happened to women during both the Mujahideen and Taliban periods.

When the US and the West, based on their global interests, decided to remove the Taliban from power, suddenly they remembered that these forces oppressed women and used this to justify their brutal invasion of Afghanistan under the pretext of liberating women.

Now Western politicians and the loyal media have decided to take into account the history of women during the Taliban era, comparing women’s situation today with that under the Taliban as if there were no history before that and subsequent “achievements” should be judged by that standard. Now, under the US-led occupation, a section of women living in Kabul and maybe some other big cities might be able to work outside the home, but they still face tremendous danger, pressure and discrimination. The situation of the vast majority of women is not better, and likely worse. The only other so-called achievement of the new regime is allowing schools for girls to open. In reality, this has not affected millions of children who are too scared or too poor to go to school. Women’s situation under the current regime has a long way to go before even catching up with the situation during the 1970s and 80s.

This worsening situation is blamed on the armed opposition groups, mainly Taliban because they have gained control over increasing parts of Afghanistan. Apart from that, it is also blamed on the “conservative society”. These are both ways of arguing that the government and the whole apparatus that was installed and structured in Afghanistan by the Western imperialist powers is on the side of women’s rights. This is a very false picture. They have done nothing to fundamentally change women’s situation, but have done many things to make sure that the oppression of women continues in some of its ugliest forms.

When the heart-breaking video of the stoning of young Rokhshana was circulating on social media, the regime claimed that this incident took place in a district under Taliban rule. But some activists in Kabul doubt this: “Usually, they are putting it on the Taliban to cover up their own kind.” (Guardian, 3 November 2015) Even if we assume that the stoning was in a Taliban-controlled area, the regime has tried hard to reintroduce the same kind of measures into law and compete with the Taliban in applying Sharia (Islamic law). Several weeks after the stoning, a local governmental court punished Zarmina and Ahmad, young lovers in the same province of Ghor, because they ran away from home. When the news reflected badly on the regime internationally, the government again tried to distance itself and blame it on the local courts and the conservatism that prevails in the society.

But the regime and its political base support this conservatism and backward ideas by enforcing backward laws through backward courts. At one point, the Afghan regime introduced a draft penal code that included “a proposal to restore stoning as punishment for adultery,” and the same report concludes that “tackling violence against women does not seem to be high on the Afghan agenda.” (Amnesty International UK, posted 25 Nov 2013)

“Half the female prison population are convicted of ‘moral crimes’ – which include running away from violent husbands, fathers or in-laws. Federal law is universally ignored in the local courts, where nearly 90 percent of all criminal and civil legal disputes are settled, and where girls are bartered to settle family disputes and a man who kills his wife can expect a fine.” (Guardian, 13 January 2013)

At the same time, “It is estimated the US government put $15 million (£9.3 m) into supporting the ‘informal justice’ sector last year, entrenching the repressive mentality. In April 2011, the Afghan government sought to reintroduce public morality laws, regulation was drafted to impose wedding codes to ensure that brides were modestly dressed, to ban music at weddings and to prevent male and female guests mixing. Shops were to be fined for selling inappropriate wedding clothes.” (Guardian, 13 January 2013)

If financial aid (not to mention legitimacy) for local and unofficial courts and the introduction of this kind of repressive laws against women are not in line with religious fundamentalism, then what is it? The whole structure of the Afghan state and its organs, including the government, parliament, courts and religious institutions, are coordinated to provide the conditions for conservatism and institutionalise conservatism and fundamentalism, and as a result strengthen and enforce the anti-women mentality in the name of what some people in the West would call “the tradition and culture of the people of Afghanistan”.

These are clear advantages to men and a basis for their support of the patriarchal system and its promotion of violence against women. But the rise of violence against women in successively more horrific forms is not accidental or due to uncontrolled factors. It is a direct result of the policies of the regime and its backers, despite gestures such as the adoption of the UN agreement concerning the Elimination of Violence Against Women (EVAW) in 2009.

Today it is not uncommon for young women to set themselves on fire or commit suicide in some other way because they are trapped in domestic violence with no one to turn to. Some seek refuge in shelters or so-called safe houses that are not that safe. Because these places house the most vulnerable girls and young women, they are occasionally raided by various military forces who consider the women in the shelter immoral. In some cases, powerful local commanders or officials pop in to abuse and harass terrified women. Despite all this, some women see these places as an alternative to self-immolation. However, there are not enough shelters for even a small fraction of victims.

“Mariam, which is not her real name, has been hiding in a secret women’s shelter in Kabul for the past two months. She lives with around 20 women who have travelled here from across Afghanistan, each with their own horrific story of abuse… Some have left violent husbands. Others have been raped or are fleeing forced marriages arranged by their parents. All of them are terrified that they will be killed by their families.” (Aljazeera, 3 July 2015)

Powerful leaders and lawmakers make various excuses to close them, such as insufficient security personnel or financial difficulties, but the real intention is to shut down even the smallest way out of hell for women. Nazir Ahmad Hanafi, a member of the Afghan parliament representing the western city of Herat and a notorious advocate of anti-women laws, declared, “These so-called ‘safe houses’ are very bad…They protect people who are doing wrong things and give them immunity. They open the gates to social problems like AIDS.” (Aljazeera, 3 July 2015)

The continuing vicious state-organised abuse of women has many other aspects. The latest report by the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, endorsed by Human Rights Watch and released on 8 March this year, reveals that women prisoners are systematically and frequently subjected to forced virginity tests. That includes girls as young as 13, and they are not only conducted by force but in the presence of many people and in an invasive manner. In fact it is a form of torture to punish women who have fled violence, since the majority of women in Afghan prisons have been charged with so-called “moral crimes” that include running away from home – either with a lover or to escape forced marriage or domestic violence. These women are charged and convicted by the local courts that receive direct financial support from the US government.

One of the authors of the report, Soraya Sobhrang, says that not only the prisons but also “women’s shelters are sending women for the tests, the Ministry of Women’s Affairs is sending them and the police are sending them.” (New York Times, 6 March 2016). This shows that these “tests” are a routine practice by governmental institutions aimed at already abused women. It has a particular ideological meaning. These “tests” mean that the authorities on every level consider these women guilty unless proven otherwise. Unfortunately, the report mainly emphasises the unreliability of such “tests” and fails to emphasise that they are an unjustifiable act of violence, as is the arrest of these women in the first place.

The fact is that despite cosmetic measures, the situation for women is getting worse in many aspects. In particular violence against women is spiralling upward. The Taliban continue to oppress women in the harshest way in the areas under their control. The entire structure of the state installed by the US and other Western imperialists and the current regime that the US directly brought to power is increasingly harsh in its treatment of women. In fact, patriarchy is institutionalised and Afghan leaders are doing all they can to consolidate it by restoring and encouraging the most backward anti-women laws such as stoning, and putting restrictions on women’s private lives, on their activities and reducing their self-confidence by denying their most basic rights. There is literally no support for women who are victims of abuse or who flee domestic violence. Instead, they are arrested, imprisoned, tortured and punished, even in the shelters run by government organisations.

While women running away from violence and the threat of death from her husband and family for so much as talking to a man of her choice are arrested and imprisoned by the authorities, men who murder a woman in the name of “honour” are usually not arrested, and if they are, often serve less than two years in prison at most.

The regime legitimises its anti-woman laws and policies in the name of respecting the culture and tradition of the people. These relations and ideas and practices correspond to the relations of production, the economic relations around which the society is organized, an economy that is in turn deeply embedded in the global capitalist system and imperialist power relations. The Afghan ruling class, like any reactionary ruling class, represents those relations and the ideas that arise from, justify and reinforce that exploitation and oppression. It cannot and will not seek to change these relations and the tradition and culture associated with them, but instead needs and seeks to consolidate and reinforce them, in old and new forms. The degradation of women and their status as the property and slave of men is a pillar of its rule and a condition for its existence.

Further, this regime is also connected to other, far more powerful extremely reactionary regimes, particularly Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, and its existence depends on world imperialism. Imperialism does not seek to and cannot liberate women in the countries it dominates, any more than it can eliminate male supremacy in its home countries.

Women’s liberation requires the abolition of classes, the social relations such as women’s oppression by men that go along with production relations based on exploitation, and the uprooting of all the ideas and practices that arise from and enforce these relations – in other words, a communist world. In a revolutionary society with a revolutionary state, starting immediately, women and men can be encouraged and protected to cast off such chains of the past – examining, debating, criticizing and where necessary uprooting old relations and ideas as part of creating a new society and a transformed, emancipating culture.

There are signs that women and especially young women in Afghanistan are increasingly defying these rotten and backward traditions, despite the high price they have to pay. But they must be organised to fight consciously for their liberation. The revolutionary and communist forces must rely on this highly oppressed section of people to wage and intensify their struggle for emancipation.

Editorial:

Introducing a transformed AWTWNS

14 March 2017. A World to Win News Service. With great joy, the editors of A World To Win News Service announce its transformation into a more thorough-going tool for revolution based on Bob Avakian's new synthesis of communism.

AWTW News Service first saw life in January 2003, at a critical juncture when under the banner of their global "war on terror" the US-led imperialists had launched and were expanding what was in fact a war for empire. After invading Afghanistan, they were preparing to invade Iraq. It was a time when a powerful people's war was surging forward in Nepal, led by revolutionaries who were participants in the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement. RIM gathered communists from around the world who, in the wake of the defeat of the revolution in China following the death of Mao Tsetung, banded together from the five continents to strengthen the struggle to do away with the capitalist system through revolution.

AWTW News Service was inspired by RIM, which based itself on Marxism-Leninism-Maoism (MLM). During the years since then, the news service untiringly exposed the crimes of the imperialists in many corners of the globe, bringing to light stories of popular resistance against oppression, analysing how all oppression was ultimately rooted in the system of capitalism-imperialism, and pointing to the need for the solution, revolution.

These past fourteen years have seen major developments, including the collapse of RIM itself. Not only are some of the forces previously united in RIM now sharply opposed to each other, the previous understanding of revolutionary communism itself has, to borrow Mao Zedong’s term, "divided into two". One strand of the old Maoism has wound up in a social-democratic liquidation of the core revolutionary principles of Marxism, exemplified tragically in the capitulation of the Maoist leadership in Nepal and the termination of the revolutionary war there. Others from the previous MLM movement are stuck in a dogmatist, religious-like upholding of sterile "Maoist" formulas that are equally devoid of revolutionary content. In opposition to this, Bob Avakian's new synthesis of communism has fully emerged, rescuing the scientific kernel of communism while criticizing and repudiating those secondary aspects in the past understanding and actions of communists that have actually gone against communism's liberatory nature. The result is that we now have a qualitatively more scientific framework for understanding the world and changing it through revolution, which is gaining adherents from among forces previously part of RIM as well as others more recently attracted to communism. (For more on RIM, its history, its collapse and the division of Maoism into two, see Communism: The Beginning of a New Stage – A Manifesto from the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA and Letter to Participating Parties and Organizations of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement by the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA.)

And how the world cries out for revolution! Everywhere inequality has intensified, women face the violent intensification of patriarchy and degradation, and whole states in parts of the Third World are written off as "failed" and left to rot. The hopes of millions worldwide that soared as US-backed dictators were toppled by mass uprisings in the “Arab Spring” were dashed with the re-consolidation of reactionary rule. War has ripped gaping wounds in the Middle East as the Western imperialists and their local allies contend with reactionary Islamic jihadists, trapping the masses in a vortex of terror and despair. Millions have been driven from their homes, and thousands drown in desperate attempts to cross the Mediterranean to safety – while those few who make it face ever higher walls erected by these same imperialists to keep them out, physical walls as well as the walls of hatred being whipped up against them. Now, after years of normalizing mounting levels of nationalist jingoism, racism and misogyny, the dynamics of this system have propelled the fascist Donald Trump into the post of commander-in-chief of US imperialism. This in turn is giving major impetus to fascist movements that have been steadily gnawing their way into the political mainstream of Europe – in Austria, Hungary and Poland, and now the Netherlands, France, Germany and elsewhere. Throughout the oppressed nations too, the rise of “strong men” like India's Modi, Turkey's Erdogan, Duterte in the Philippines and others, tells the same story: the post-World War 2 order is rapidly coming apart at the seams.

The most fundamental question facing humanity today is whether this great turmoil will give rise to the establishment of regimes that are far more repressive and reactionary than even those today, with an unprecedented intensification of oppression and inequality, the unleashing of war and famine, environmental catastrophe and potentially far worse, or whether the oppressed can be enabled to rise, led by a core of conscious revolutionaries, and dismantle the existing state apparatuses in key parts of the world and establish radically new state powers that begin to do away with all oppression and exploitation. This has everything to do with how well hundreds and thousands today can be armed with a scientific approach to reality and act on that basis. Today this means transforming AWTW News Service into one firmly based on Avakian's new communism, a task that is proudly being assumed by the communists who have been the driving force in it over these years – a task that you are being asked to join in, in countless ways: reposting, distributing, writing, reporting, debating and corresponding with it, to name but a few.

Articles are needed that lay bare how the source of every kind of oppression in every country is ultimately rooted in the capitalist-imperialist system, whether it be through analysing the coup d'etat in Turkey, the failure of the Syriza experiment in Greece, the rise of fascism in the US and Europe, etc.

The news service needs analysis that lays bare the major faultlines ripping through every class-divided society and propelling millions into questioning and resistance, to help increasing numbers make the leap from being fighters on one front against capitalist oppression to fighters on every front. To take just one example, it needs to highlight the many different ways that brave forces are stepping outside normal channels to resist the draconian measures being enacted against migrants, exposing how it is the capitalist-imperialist system that is driving immigration and clamping down on migrants. It has to help establish a powerful internationalist current around this burning issue – showing why and how it is essential that the "whole world comes first", rather than "what does this mean for me and my country" – so as to bridge borders between peoples, to change not only what people think but how they think, to train them in the communist line and outlook. Or, in relation to patriarchy, to bring out why you cannot break all the links in the chain of capitalist oppression except one, why leaving male supremacy unchallenged quickly opens the door to the strengthening of every form of division and inequality. All this is part of the process of "fighting the power and transforming the people, for revolution" – and not least of all, bringing forth a new generation of revolutionary leaders in this process, who can use this news service to help identify and bring together more revolutionary forces wherever they may be.

It is critical to expose the system and its institutions and structures, but it is also vital to put forward the solution, a new kind of state power and a new way of organising the society and economy to meet people's needs in the broadest, most liberating sense, and step-by-step enable people to make the transition, through revolution, to a whole new world of flourishing humanity, armed with critical thinking and free of the shackles of class, patriarchy and all social divisions and inequalities. To do this we need to take on and tear apart the reactionary verdict on revolution and socialism. Otherwise, our criticism of the existing system loses force and purpose. Furthermore, based on the new synthesis summation of the socialist experiences of the 20th century, we need to show the necessity, possibility and desirability of Avakian's re-envisaged socialist society – how it not only meets the basic needs of the people, but will be a vibrant society marked by an unprecedented flourishing of intellectual and cultural life.

Without BA's new communism and the understanding that has developed on the basis of his approach and method, even for those who have vital elements of understanding about how thoroughly rotten all that exists really is, it is difficult to understand that the world doesn't have to be the way it is, that the potential for a radically different way of living for all humanity lies entangled in today's web of contradictions that are driving society, trapping oppressed humanity in dog-eat-dog relations, and threatening unprecedented disasters. Avakian's visionary understanding of the goal of communism shows how that is not only possible, but an urgent necessity, crying out for action right now.

With this understanding as the solid foundation of the news service, its pages will be open to others who, from different perspectives and approaches, bring to the light of day otherwise hidden stories of resistance and opposition to the prevailing order, shed light on the crimes of the system and how it works, reveal the complexity of the forces at work, and do all this in a way that compels others to turn to this site as a vibrant hub of critical analysis and debate. To truly become a weapon for revolution in growing parts of the world, articles need to be shared, correspondence is needed, key articles translated into different languages, and more. To further this, the news service will rupture from its weekly edition format that has been more oriented to the print media epoch, and instead focus on releasing articles on the Web hot on the heels of major events in the world. We need contributions from all those able to help so that the now far too narrow scope of our articles, limited by our current abilities, can begin to better match the needs of what must necessarily be a global revolutionary process.

Hard truths need to be stated clearly from the outset: the strength of the forces worldwide fighting for communist revolution pales in comparison to the immense challenges before us. But it is an even more important truth that never before in history has there existed a clearer and more scientific understanding of the source of oppression and what is needed to do away with it. On this foundation, A World To Win News Service can and must become a powerful tool serving all those who long for an end to oppression and exploitation, drawing forward and training thousands and influencing millions in many countries around the world, hastening the day when humanity can break free of the shackles that have enchained it for all too long.